A soft glimmer pierced the darkness as my heavy eyelids fluttered open. The world was quiet, gentle, wrapped in a dreamlike haze. My small hands instinctively reached upward, drawn to the radiant, loving smile of a woman cradling me—her eyes filled with a warmth that made my chest swell.

  She held me close, her arms enveloping me in a cocoon of safety, rocking me slowly, rhythmically. Her scent—lavender and the faint trace of warm milk—wrapped around me like a memory too precious to forget. Her voice, low and sweet like honeyed velvet, began to hum a lullaby that echoed from the deepest recesses of my childhood.

  "...Humm~ hmmm~ hmmm hmmmm~

  Hum~ hmmm~ hmmm hmmmm~

  My little boy, close your eyes~

  Mama's gonna keep you safe tonight~

  Humm~ hmmm~ hmmm hmmm..."

  Each note pressed softly against my heart, lulling me into serenity. The world faded into blurred golden hues and muffled comfort. My limbs felt weightless. My worries dissolved. Her voice was a river, and I let it carry me.

  "...Humm~ hmmm~ hmmm hmmmm~

  My little boy, close your eyes~

  Mama’s gonna keep you safe tonight..."

  "Hmmm~ hmmm~ hmmmmm~"

  "Hmmm~ hmmm~ hmmmmm~"

  "Hmmm... aaaaAAAAARRHHHH!!!"

  The lullaby snapped—no, shattered—into chaos.

  I jolted back to harsh, suffocating reality. The gentle light vanished, swallowed by the madness that screamed through the halls. A monstrous roar ripped through the air like a jagged blade across flesh—raw, guttural, familiar.

  I remained kneeling, stunned, my body trembling. Tears burned trails down my cheeks as my thoughts fractured. I could barely comprehend the nightmare unfolding before me.

  "Mom... mom... mom..." My voice cracked like dry earth. All I could do was whisper that word, broken and powerless, as I stared at the warped form of the woman I once loved.

  "Jiiiiiiiiiinnnnn, hahahahahaAHAHAHA!"

  Her voice—manic and shrill—cut through the chamber-like glass under pressure. She ran with twisted grace, her feet barely touching the ground, arms flailing with wild abandon. The echo of her unhinged laughter filled the air with venom.

  "Mom! Please!" I shouted through my tears. "If you’re still in there… if you can hear me—I don’t want to fight! Please, Mom... I can't do this..." My voice cracked beneath the weight of despair as I crawled toward her, heart bared and shattered.

  She froze—just five feet away. For a moment, time hung still.

  I lifted my head slowly, hope clinging to me like a breath of cold air.

  But that hope dissolved the moment I saw her face.

  There was no recognition in her eyes—only sadistic amusement. A grin stretched across her ruined face, grotesque and mocking.

  "Mom, can we—"

  CRACK.

  The world turned upside-down.

  A blinding pain exploded through my skull as her foot collided with my head—so fast I barely registered the impact. The upgraded gauntlet I’d equipped saved me, taking the brunt of the blow just in time to keep my skull from splitting open. Still, the damage was brutal. My health dropped to 78 in a single heartbeat.

  BAM!!

  I slammed into the wall like a meteor, blood erupting from my mouth on impact. The pristine marble cracked and caved behind me, forming a crater as deep as a coffin. Ribs shattered, bone pierced flesh—I couldn’t breathe. Pain twisted through every nerve.

  I was still gasping when I saw her move again.

  A blur. A nightmare made flesh. Sprinting toward me like death itself.

  “Mom…” I croaked, pinned inside the crater. My thoughts splintered between agony and memory.

  I remembered the warm smile that greeted me after school, no matter how late. The way she’d quietly skip her own meals so I could eat. Her gentle hands pressed against my feverish forehead. Her tired eyes lit up just to see me happy.

  She endured everything. For me.

  And now—now she charged like a spider with too many legs, her form a horrific blend of stitched flesh and grotesque intent. She vaulted into the air—so high—a puppet on invisible strings, three right legs extended like spears of judgment.

  BOOOOM!!!

  The world erupted.

  Marble shattered. A cavern formed where the crater once was. Debris and dust surged like a wave, burying everything.

  I dodged—barely—just before her limbs could skewer me, but the shockwave flung me like a rag doll across the floor. Another 20 HP is gone. My body screamed in protest. My breath hitched, sharp, and shallow.

  I was down to nearly half my health.

  And then—her voice again.

  "Still alive, son?"

  "Don’t be shy~ Let momma know if you're still breathing~ Hehehahahaha!"

  Her voice slithered through the dust like poison smoke, each word laced with mocking affection. Her eyes—burning and wild—scanned the rubble, searching hungrily for any hint of movement.

  She didn’t want me to fight.

  She wanted me to break.

  I crouched low beneath the rubble, every muscle tense, breath drawn so shallow it barely stirred the dust around me. My heart thundered in my ears, but I forced it into silence. I couldn’t afford to make a sound—not even a whisper. Her presence was everywhere, suffocating and hungry.

  I scanned the ruined chamber, searching for any crack, any vulnerability I could exploit in the abomination. My body trembled—not from fear, but from the resolve coiling in my chest like a venomous serpent.

  I couldn’t run. I wouldn’t run. Not when she wore the face of someone I once cherished. Someone I still do. Even if the odds were laughable, even if it meant throwing my life into the abyss, I was going to kill this monster—this grotesque insult to everything sacred about her memory.

  “Kill... gonna beat it to a pulp,” I growled through clenched teeth, the whites of my eyes glowing red with fury and exhaustion.

  The aberration twitched, sensing movement—but not mine. Finding no trace, it shrieked in frustration and kicked through the debris with enough force to splinter stone. Rubble exploded, clouds of choking dust billowing through the air and temporarily dulling her vision.

  “Jiiiin, where aaare youuu? You can’t hide forever!” she howled, her voice cracking, rising to a furious crescendo. “Don’t make Mommy angry now! Come out and FACE ME!!”

  With an erratic sweep of her arms, she sent out dozens of interwaves, scanning blindly, desperately.

  [Innate Trait: Vorpal Hex] — Activated.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Thum!!!

  A faint ripple trembled through the void around me. Normally, this ability triggers automatically during interdimensional travel—but I’d learned to control it manually. My body became a shadow, a silence—invisible to the probing webs of interwave detection.

  She thrashed harder now, her rage growing unstable. Her massive form bucked and twisted, kicks and stomps shattering the ground beneath her. Her eye-covered chest pulsed and writhed in erratic motion, reacting to even the slightest disturbance.

  I moved like a whisper between tantrums, gathering a handful of jagged stones, clutching them tightly in my bloodstained palms. I had a plan—a desperate one. My ability, [Void Rend], was off cooldown. I could open a rift, escape to another world...

  But not this time. I wasn’t running.

  I was finishing this.

  Carefully, I tossed the stones to her opposite flank, timing it just as she lifted her leg to strike again. They clattered loudly—her head snapped toward the sound like a predator sensing weakness.

  She took the bait.

  With my fangs bared, I surged forward like a beast unleashed, bursting from the dust cloud with a snarl. My body coiled, momentum building—my right arm pulled back like a loaded spring.

  This punch... will hit.

  But she caught the motion, twisted mid-spin, and lunged.

  BOOM!!!

  My fist collided with her leg mid-air—a bone-rattling explosion detonated between us. The shockwave flung me upward like a rag doll while the aberrant staggered back, momentarily dazed by the force of the blow.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  Mid-flight, I twisted into a backflip, gathering centrifugal force, both fists locked together and raised above my head. I roared, descending like a meteor.

  She snarled, lashing out with a retaliatory kick—her clawed foot sliced past my side, grazing me just enough to send a cold spike of pain through my lower ribs. I contorted in the air, barely dodging a lethal blow.

  BANG!!!

  The impact of my double-fisted smash echoed like a war drum. Her skull was hard as forged steel—the pain that lanced through my hands was instantaneous. Bones cracked. Fingers snapped. But I didn’t scream.

  I hit the ground crouched like a tiger, feral and focused. She reeled, then recovered with terrifying speed, her limbs already lashing out in a storm of stomps that cratered the marble around us.

  I weaved through the chaos—circling, ducking, leaping. My body screamed, but I pushed harder, waiting for the right moment.

  I leaped again.

  SPLAT!!

  Too slow.

  A wild kick blindsided me, slamming into my side and detonating the bones in my right arm and ribs like brittle glass. Blood sprayed from my lips as I was hurled backward, skipping across the floor like a stone on a lake.

  [You received 20 HP damage]

  “Ughk…” I gasped, coughing thick crimson as I forced myself upright. Pain throbbed in my chest with every heartbeat, but I stood. I had to.

  And there she was—bolting toward me, her expression twisted into a smile too wide, too sharp. Her molten eyes gleamed with wicked joy.

  My knees buckled with every step, my vision blurred, and yet I stood—driven not by strength, but by hatred that smoldered deep in my soul. I faced her—this twisted mockery of my mother—with clenched teeth and a fire that refused to die, even if my body already was.

  The first kick came like a freight train, slamming into my ribs. A sickening crack echoed as my side caved in, blood spurting from my mouth like a ruptured pipe. Another strike shattered my femur. I dropped, but before I could fall completely, a sweeping arc cleaved through the air and tore off my right arm at the joint, the flesh flailing like a loose thread in the wind. My body thrashed against the storm of pain, barely functioning.

  More blows followed—merciless, mechanical. My kneecaps exploded under the barrage, bones splintering and grinding inside shredded muscle. Still, I tried to stand.

  Still... I tried.

  Then came the final blow—a thunderous, grotesque slam directly to my face. My nose crumpled, cartilage and bone pulverized. My skull split with a dull crunch, and I felt my left eye burst from its socket, rolling across the blood-slicked marble floor like a dislodged pearl.

  I collapsed like a broken puppet, soaking in a pool of my own blood, limbs twisted, nerves burning out from the overload.

  I couldn’t even feel the pain anymore.

  I was dying.

  [Warning]

  [Health at 1 HP – Critical Condition. Regeneration is currently impossible.]

  “He... heh... heh...” A weak, gurgled laugh escaped my mangled lips. It wasn’t amusement—just a hollow chuckle at my own foolishness. Maybe if I’d just run... escaped when I had the chance...

  Maybe.

  But I couldn’t. I wasn’t built that way. Even if it killed me, I couldn’t turn my back on what she had become. Not when the one I loved had turned into this.

  I had to end it.

  For her. For me.

  She crouched before me like a predator savoring its prey, her twisted expression somewhere between amusement and disgust.

  “Poor little boy,” she crooned, brushing my blood-matted hair with a finger, "if you’d only listened to Mommy... maybe I’d have let you live a little longer.”

  Her voice slid into laughter—cold and booming, echoing across the shattered room like a death knell.

  “Kill me? Sweetheart, you couldn’t even scratch me!”

  Suddenly, her jaw unhinged, and from the black abyss of her throat came a spray of sticky, web-like fluid. It slammed into my chest, hoisting me skyward, spinning me in midair, and binding me in a cocoon of glistening horror. Upside down, blood dripping from my broken nose and lip, I watched helplessly as she walked away—only to return moments later with a grotesque grin.

  Without hesitation, she sank her teeth into my left arm and ripped it off in one savage tug, slurping down the flesh with obscene delight.

  “You know,” she said cheerfully, “I might just keep you alive and snack on you when I get peckish.”

  She smirked as if discussing the weather.

  Then, casually, she bit her own wrist, tearing open a raw, gushing wound. Grinning, she shoved her bleeding limb into my mouth. Her corrupted blood flooded down my throat—boiling, burning, alive. I gagged, struggling, the taste like rusted iron and poison as my lungs tried to scream.

  [Ting!]

  [You healed 30 HP]

  [Trait Activated: Ungodly]

  SHEEEEERK!!

  A grotesque splorch echoed as murky black goo exploded from my wounds. New limbs began to form, sinew and bone knitting together at inhuman speed. My shattered eye reformed, vision slowly returning. My ribs aligned again, each crack like nails driving into my brain—but I endured it.

  “What do we have here?” she purred, cupping my newly regenerated face with a clawed hand, her touch mockingly tender.

  I didn’t answer. My lips are sealed tight, trying to focus, to find any way out of this living hell.

  “Oh-ho... so you're an Emissary, too?” she giggled, her voice lilting like a lullaby. “Just like the other one.”

  Then—slice. Without ceremony, she severed my left leg. Blood sprayed. I barely had time to scream before a new one started to emerge, raw and glistening.

  “AHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

  My scream cracked the air, torn from the deepest place in my gut—pain layered upon pain until I thought my soul would rip in two.

  She laughed. Oh, she laughed.

  “What a nice treat, Jin. I won’t be hungry for days!”

  She bit off a chunk of my thigh and chewed thoughtfully, her glowing blue eyes gleaming like stars in a black sky.

  "I'm gonna enjoy our time together."

  And the torture continued.

  Relentless.

  Unforgiving.

  And somewhere deep inside me, even through the agony, something darker began to stir.

  The monster never let up—not even for a breath. I couldn’t open a portal, not without my hands, and they were either pinned, torn, or gnawed away.

  I was shackled by webbing and hopelessness, suspended upside down like a slab of meat, screaming not from death—but from the endless loop of dying and healing, over and over again.

  No escape.

  No mercy.

  Time blurred into oblivion—hours melted into days, days into weeks, or maybe longer. I lost count. Scars littered my flesh like a road map to Hell.

  My scalp had been torn so many times, I’d forgotten what my own face looked like in a mirror. My once-black hair, now as white as bone, clung to blood-soaked strands and flaked away like ash. Pain lost meaning. Suffering became the baseline of my existence.

  Rationality?

  Gone.

  My mind had been chewed just as thoroughly as my limbs. Madness was my only companion now, a quiet whisper that numbed the pain and kept my heart beating.

  Chuck.

  Both arms sloughed off my shoulders with a dull, wet plop, twitching on the floor like useless husks. Blood oozed out in thick rivulets as the aberrant—my mother—gnawed on my flesh with wild delight.

  She had changed, devolving into something more grotesque by the hour. Her bloated belly sagged with excess, her skin now a patchwork of sickly pale scales. Her face twisted into an insectoid mask of horror—six slit-pupil eyes, a warped skull armored by crimson bone plates, and a grin stretching ear to ear, filled with jagged, overlapping fangs.

  Mercy Asura

  [Devolved Mater Mala – Level 9]

  Rook-rank Aberrant (Unique)

  HP: 400 | MP: 150

  STR: 8 | INT: 12

  AGI: 17 | VIT: 18

  DEF: 35 | MOR: -75

  “You’re perfect,” she hissed, voice now rasping and gurgling. “Thanks to you, I can evolve without end—hahahahaha!”

  She chomped down again, ravenous.

  “But you’re getting dull,” she said, tilting her head. “No more screaming... no more begging... Just an empty, broken thing now.”

  Her clawed hand slapped across my cheek, slicing a deep, bloody groove. It healed almost instantly. My arms reformed, but I didn’t flinch.

  Something else stirred instead.

  A black fog coiled around my body like a serpent—dense, cold, hungry. It oozed malice.

  My eyes flicked open—no longer dazed, no longer human. Crimson light poured from them like cursed embers, and instead of tears, blood streamed down to the cold ground.

  Sensing the sudden shift, she flinched.

  Then acted.

  With a roar, she launched a thunderous kick—enough force to level a wall—straight toward my cocooned prison.

  BAM!!

  The web prison exploded. Silken threads scattered like ash in the wind. The ceiling quaked. All that remained was a single strand, swaying gently.

  “You defiant brat! That’s what you get for disobeying!” she shrieked.

  “I might’ve cried.” I murmured calmly, my voice echoing from behind her.

  She froze.

  I stood tall, the black fog weaving into a ghostly cloak across my shoulders. Her body trembled, sensing something primal. Something divine.

  I cracked my knuckles, one by one. My bones groaned with renewed strength. I rolled my shoulders, flexed my rebuilt legs, and stretched my neck. Every sinew of my frame brimmed with unholy power. My body felt impossibly light—yet heavier with purpose. My once wiry frame had evolved; I now stood taller, broader. 5’9” of hardened muscle sculpted by agony. My torment had refined me. Reforged me.

  With a single swing of my arm, the air itself seemed to ripple and shatter. I grinned.

  [Innate Trait]

  [Fragmental Divinity]

  Transcended One – Evolution I

  126 / 5,000 Points

  Description:

  Your body has transcended mortal limitations. Heightened perception, limitless stamina, and godlike resilience now define you. The more pain you endure, the more power you gain.

  Added Effects:

  HP: +150 | MP: +50

  STR: +10 | INT: +5

  AGI: +10 | VIT: +15

  DEF: +20 | MOR: 0

  Name: Jin Asura

  Level: 1

  Rank: 12th

  Title: The Leviathan, Emissary of Doom

  Constellation: Capricornus

  Innate Traits:

  Devourer of the Sun | Truthseeker | Fragmental Divinity | Ungodly | Vorpal Hex

  Taboo Trait:

  Bio-Forge | Acid Mantle

  HP: 80 (+320) | MP: 20 (+130)

  STR: 4 (+10) | INT: 2 (+8)

  AGI: 5 (+10) | VIT: 7 (+17)

  DEF: 1 (+30) | MOR: -48

  I read my stats with cold clarity. My eyes gleamed, reflecting her now-trembling frame.

  A wicked smile curled my lips.

  The predator had become the prey.

  How the tables have turned.

  Outer Celestials,

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  [Ting!]

  [A Review and Rating would be helpful too.]